SuSE 9.3 is the most polished and easy to use release from SuSE. It goes a long way in dispelling the notion that Linux is not ready for the desktop. It is a comprehensive release with enhanced hardware detection and configuration and an exhaustive suite of available applications.

In my experiances with SuSE it is better to install it with the default settings and add other stuff later instead of customising it at install time. The first time I installed SuSE 9.2 I customised it alot, and it broke it, X wouldn't start and when i finally got it to, my other partitions wouldn't mount (i got them to work after editing fstab, but it was annoying having to).
I installed it again a few weeks later and used the defaults it worked perfectly, and detected everything (except my winmodem, but i got it working easly)
So suse is one of the best i've used, i havent tried Fedora or Mandriva lately, but i used Red Hat and Mandrake at version 9.

I have used both debian and RPM distros and havent noticed much difference except that most pakages you download off websites will be in RPM

One of the best things about SuSE was built in MP3 support, and other propietry stuff, which i like, not having to download extra stuff to do basic things.